Field team: survey of the Madonna dell’Ambro Sanctuary

The following pictures were taken by Eng. Francesco Graziotti, Eng. Ilaria Senaldi and Eng. Daniele Perrone representing Eucentre. Translation from Italian to English by Elide Pantoli (University of California, San Diego)

Date: October 19th 2016

Category: Sanctuary

Name of the structure: Madonna dell’Ambro sanctuary

Building typology: Unreinforced masonry

Municipality: Montefortino (FM)

Epicentral distance: [28 km]

Description of damage:

The construction of the sanctuary started in 1595, and it was based on a project of 1503 (see Figure 1). The cloister and the adjacent bell tower were added in later times, namely between 1800 and 1900. The structure remained mainly the same from that time, except for some retrofit works. The plant of the building is regular and with only one nave with masonry barrel vaults and exterior wooden cover, the dimensions of the nave are roughly 11.50×19.10 m, with an height of 10.5 m.

The vault of the nave shows a clear and severe state of damage (Figure 2 and 3), with cracks in the crown and haunches, and a lowering of the keystone of around 10 cm. In the main facade and side walls it was observed a re-opening of cracks created during previous seismic events (Figure 4). This same phenomenon was observed also in the apse. The presence of adjacent bodies with different heights caused cracks due to the interaction of bodies not properly linked together (Figure 5).